


The Wanderer

by flollius



Series: Tracing Lines [5]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Domestic Violence, Durin Family Feels, F/M, God these tags are depressing, Sadness, Side-fic, This universe will be the death of me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-19 16:21:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2394944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flollius/pseuds/flollius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lost, exiled, and gripping on to the edges of the world, he tries to figure out when all it went wrong, and if there's any way he can ever recover what he's lost. </p><p>What happened to Dís' husband, before, during, and after his marriage to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is why I need to stop with this damn universe.
> 
> I hat the idea to start with and it just... wouldn't leave me alone, until it was done. I certainly didn't imagine it would grow into this, but that's the nature of it all, I guess.
> 
> I mean, there are a couple of points in here relevant to the main overall plot, but this probably didn't need like ten thousand words. I'm sorry guys.
> 
> Also this isn't a "feel sorry for the guy" kind of fic, either. I didn't want it to come off like that. He is still a very shitty person who has done some very shitty things. I just wanted to give a little... reason to it, I guess.

He scratches into the rock with a piece of obsidian, sharp, angular runes. He writes his name over and over and over again, ten, twenty, thirty times. He kisses the jagged rockface, his marks as shallow as a wet fingernail in skin. They won’t last a decade before they weather away.

I’m real I’m real I’m real I’m real

 

* * *

Memories come into his head as he walks through the grass one morning. Being a dwarrow, small enough to stand on Daddy’s feet with his head under his chin, reaching up, giggling. Running breathlessly through the halls, screaming with laughter as Daddy ran after him, teeth bared and bejewelled fingers curled in mock claws, a bear-skin draped over his shoulders. Falling asleep with his head on Daddy’s shoulder and being carried into bed, blearily asking for a story. All of it filters, springwater through layers of rock. It’s pure and light and clear.

He thinks about  her at night, when it’s cold and he’s shivering in his clothes, huddled before the fire. Bitch, whore, cunt. The insults come out in sharp mutters . His hands find his face, trace the lines that Thorin cut there. They’ve faded into scars, silver and white, gleaming against his greyish, pallid skin. His cheeks are loose pouches, sagging and faded. He’s not eating enough.

He can’t think about Fili though. It hurts too much, when he’s reminded of his dead little boy.

 

* * *

There was no proof of her for years. No letters, no courting, no visits. Just a promise signed by Thror, a date. Daddy wasn’t daddy anymore; Vili was  Father in the bedchamber,  Your Grace in palace and court, and  Self-centred Prick in his head. He saw her first in a picture, drawn by a visiting Stonefoot scribe and poet. He bought the sketch for half a pound of gold, more than the road-weary dwarf had ever seen, and sat in his chamber all night until the candles melted into pools of tallow and wax, dripping onto the floor. He was only twenty-four but he  knew he wanted her. He needed her. He had to have her.

So he collected scraps of her story over several weeks, gleaned from visiting merchants, diplomats, pilgrims. The life of Dís was short, brutish, and already horribly sad. Her mother died when she was a child, and Smaug’s attack had left her homeless, wandering the countryside with her father, grandfather and brothers. Durin’s Folk had recently settled in Dunland, mining coal and iron and trading with the wildmen of the hills, a poor shadow of their former life. Those who had seen Dís in her prime whispered that she was the most beautiful dam imaginable, with the sweetest singing-voice in all of Middle Earth. Those who had seen a glimpse of her since Erebor fell reported a drab little figure, dressed as a male with her hair tied in a single, simple braid, big blue eyes staring out at the world in a dirty face. There was always a darkness in their face when they spoke of her. She was diminished. Thror had been plying her to various princes and kings for years now, to try and save her from ruin, but no one was taking the bait.

They fought for hours over her – Vili slammed his fists on the table and hollered, said it was preposterous, that Durin’s Folk were selfish, heartless, mad with gold-lust, and after Smaug’s slaughter of Erebor, vagrants. His son was going to marry one of his cousins or second cousins when he was the right age and have a tribe of golden-haired princes. Vili wasn’t having his sacred line tainted with the blood of an outsider. He begged, pleaded, screamed, threatened to kill himself, to kill Vili, said he ride out alone and take her for himself. He broke glass and twisted metal and left the chamber in ruins.

When his son had the dagger at his throat, Vili relented.

 

* * *

He takes off his gloves with the fingers cut out, splays his hands before the flames, watching his skin stain red. The three runes of Dís’ name shines deep blue and he presses his fingers over it, the hatred and anger swelling to a bonfire in his heart.

She would have had his name stamped on her wrist. He may be written out of the books, chiselled away from the stone but his name would have remained, perhaps for a little while, until her skin rotted and peeled and left nothing but bone. He sounds the name out on his lips now, the word strange and unknown, as if it was spoken in a foreign language.

Why is he so compelled to follow Thorin’s rule? Why does he keep his name secret, locked away, only coming out in his fits of madness, when he would scratch it stone, carve it on the trees, draw it in the dirt, scream it into the sky until he was hoarse. He still couldn’t tell anyone, look them in the eye and utter his name. Thorin’s declaration, the marks on his face, it runs deep, deep into the chasm of his soul, where light couldn’t touch it. He hadn’t even broken any laws with what he did. She was his wife, his property, and he had every right to have her if he wanted to. He could give her to someone else too, and no one could argue otherwise. He was her husband, her ruler, her protector.

He casts his mind back, going through the years and wondering if there was any time, any one moment when it turned bitter and sour. When did he start to hate her? He’s not sure he remembers anymore. Emotions were always feverish with Dís, love and lust and anger bound together, cast in iron. Perhaps he always hated her, resented her, since the moment he saw her in the flesh, and it lingered there, deep down.

 

* * *

Perhaps Vili thought that making him wait for ten years would cool the fever. Perhaps he would fall in love with one of their own dams, Mahal knew they were pretty enough. He threw dinners and balls to try and tempt his son. Dozens of potential wives, their dreadlocked hair coiled elaborately and dressed in their best robes, were paraded before the prince, with the breasts almost spilling out and the stomach exposed.

He took a number of them to bed. Silly, simpering things, they worshipped him, lying on the bed and smiling, open and inviting. It was mechanical – a thrusting, a sigh, a feeling of incompleteness. Afterwards, when he’d sent them back to whatever gilded house they belonged to, he would lie in bed with the picture of Dís, finger hovering an inch over the page.

After a while, he commissioned a painting of her. The artist used a model, one of his conquests lolling naked on his sofa, but gave her Dís’ face, painted black braids tumbling over her breasts, coloured her skin milk-white. He couldn’t give another expression other than the quiet, solemn face in the sketch. It was disconnected, but the prince was enraptured with the art. He had it hung over his bed behind a curtain. Sometimes, when he was fucking whatever poor dam his father had thrown at him as a distraction, he would stop and bind their eyes with silk, playacting at a game. When he knew they couldn’t see, he would reach out and pull the curtain open, exposing the fictional image of Dís naked, waiting for him with that subdued solemnity. He always finished quickly then, closing his eyes and wishing he was somewhere else.

 

* * *

Halfway through the spring, about five or six years since he was banished (it’s hard to tell, the weeks and months are all running together, time is a vague, shadowy concept to him now), he decides to find some answers. He walks towards the East, thinking he will retrace her steps, find hints and clues and piece together the story of Dís and Fili.

But perhaps it’s been too long. Perhaps they know who he is, when they look at him. Perhaps she paid them all off on the way, she did take a nice little sum of gold with her when she left. Or perhaps she never made it this far, she perished in the mountains, her body pulled apart by wolves and bears. Nobody seems to have seen or remembered her at all.

 

* * *

There was a pitiful attempt at excess the day he finally met her. The mountains stank of death and they were still in mourning after the loss of Thror, Thrain, and Frerin. It was so obvious that the Longbeards were trying to give off airs of wealth and luxury that they didn’t have anymore, and it was difficult to keep his tongue in his head. Fíak snickered under his breath, touched his elbow and leaned in, said he hoped his prince was happy with what he was settling for.

Dís was brought out after a while, dressed up in her best clothes, the mismatch of her clasps and jewellery making it clear they were borrowed. He didn’t care. She was a little older than in the sketch – fifty last spring, he reminded himself. Dís had rounded out, grown slightly taller, her nose harder and longer and her beard a touch thicker. He couldn’t trust himself to speak and so he just stood and stared, taking it all in, not wanting to believe that it could be true, that she was finally, truly, completely his.

The marriage ceremony was a blur, the feasts and dancing, it all ran together. The strongest memory came afterwards, on the road, inside the caravan for the first time, all draped with silks from the east and lined with furs. She was a virgin of course, shy and quiet and clearly terrified. There was a stiffness, a mistrust in her, both during and after. It was so utterly unlike the dams he had fucked before, that for a while it terrified him. Perhaps he should have been more gentle – although he thought she liked it, Dís still bled, and hurt, and afterwards when he tried to hold her close, she turned away, burying her face in the furs, as though she were about to cry.

He didn’t know what to say to her, and it didn’t seem as though she was willing to talk much either. So he left her alone most days, retreating inside his own head and feeling the body at his elbow, as cold and unmoving as a marble statue. He could still make love to her – it seemed like the only thing he knew how to do, because there was no expectation, no underlying fear that he would fuck it all up. She had nothing to compare him too. He made Dís scream and struggle and moan, the passion and pleasure swelling to the point of pain. Sometimes he knew he went too far, but it was intoxicating, to feel the strain of her muscles, the low, earthy moan of her voice, surrendering to him, moving in sync. She was more  alive , more real, than the painted, smiling dolls he had in the Orocani Mountains. The talking came in dribs and drabs afterwards, while they lay in each other’s arms and he knew that he loved her. He begged her to sing for him, soft and quiet as though she was telling him a secret.

At least Vili was civil to her. His eyes flashed at his son when they returned, and afterwards he could see Vili and Fíak talking to each other when the rest of the hall was occupied. He knew Fíak was disappointed – he had a younger sister that he was hoping his prince would marry one day. Even if there wasn’t Dís, he never would have done it. Her mouth made him sick, it was too red and full, and whenever she kissed him, it was wet and sticky. She made the most awful whining noises when she was being fucked, too. It was like stamping on a puppy. The sound always ripped into his gut and he had to clench his teeth and try very hard to push through.

He burned the portrait before Dís could see it, watching the paint peel and blacken in the flames. He didn’t need some artificial rendition, her face painted over another’s body. Not now that he had the real thing forever.

 

* * *

There’s a thick wood in the southern lands, and for an entire year, he’s lost. His wandering is in some ways intentional. His shoes fall apart and his cloak wears down to rags, and for the winter, he camps out in the hollow of a massive tree, not moving more than half a mile in a day. He survives by digging in the dirt for worms and beetles, trapping small animals or crouching for hours on the riverbank, a sharp stick in his hand, waiting for an eel or fish to swim past.

He goes for weeks without speaking. His voice become hoarse and disused, creaking like a loose floorboard, a rusty hinge in the wind. The blonde in his hair goes grey and what’s left of his beard is thin, ragged, colourless. He sees a reflection of himself in the still water, a portrait painted in ash and dirt. It’s frightening to see. He remembers his prime, when he was broad, strong, virile, a statue, carved with perfection. Not like this, with his hair going grey far too early and the muscles shrivelled up. A man or elf would have died by now, wasting away down to bones and rags, but dwarves endure. He doesn’t need to eat much. It’s a hibernation – he sleeps for sixteen hours at a time in the hollowed-out tree, in a bed of needles and dry leaves that he’s made for himself.

He dreams a lot – dreams about his home, his wife, his son. Their smiling faces pass through his mind, the sound of laughter ringing in his ears. And always, always, he wakes up cold and shivering and utterly alone.

 

* * *

Víli called for his son, a few years after his too-soon marriage to the foreign dam. He paced before approaching his father, waiting until the blood cooled in his limbs and his head wasn’t swimming.

“Your Grace?” There was a guard at the door, so he held together a ragged pretence. “You requested an audience with me?”

Vili grunted, waved the guard away and waited until the two are utterly alone before speaking. “It’s about Dís.” The nails bit down against his palm, waiting for his father to come out and just fucking say it. “The way that you treat her.”

“Yes Father?”

“Walking around arm and arm in her, being so openly besotted... It’s not  right , son. You’re not letting her control you are you?”

He stared. “No – of course not. She’s my  wife , not my mother.” She’d seen the fights by then, refused to let anyone else near her and he liked that, wanted it. He kept everyone else away. Whenever they did go out, he kept one arm around her waist, holding her close in a wordless sign that she was his and his alone. He coaxed the smiles and laughter, pale and soft as they were, and didn’t care who saw it.

“You let her talk over you.”

“I  love  her.” His hands balled into fists, seething. Why does her hot-headedness and stubborn will matter to him? It was another thing that he loved, watching it unfold slowly like a springtime flower. He would never silence her. “Do you want me to beat her in public, is that it? Do you want me to treat her like a chained dog in a show of strength?”

“Durin’s folk are cunning and crafty, my son. You must remember, it is your will that brought her here. Make sure she is aware of it.”

He left then, unable to hear any more. He paced, feeling the pressure grow in his skull, hotter and tighter until he couldn’t think. So he went to the training-yard, hoping to take the anger out on some straw-stuffed dummy. One of his partners, Hróf, was there, a little drunk, cheerful and ready for a spar. He beat the dwarf easily and kept on going, disconnected from his hands, seeing nothing but red, his father’s words sounding over and over in his ears until the Hróf’s cry of pain finally burst through, and he drew back, horrified at what he had done.

 

* * *

As the earth warms beneath a springtime sun, he decides it’s time to emerge. He stumbles, weathered, grey, so very, very old and frail. After two months he finds himself in a little village, all Men, very southern in their quiet hostility. He spends several weeks in a kind of daze, working at a smithy for a few hours, spending his coin on bread and beer and a rare side of beef, sleeping in the stables.

Then a red-headed dwarf comes, an outsider like him. He  talks to him, a real dwarf speaking real words for the first time since he was banished. A thief and a boy, but still, a real dwarf, nonetheless. Nori.

Nori mentions he’s from Ered Luin, and the hate pricks in his chest. The bitterness swells on his tongue, thick and bitter as orcs-blood. “Tell me.” He spits. “Is Thorin Oakenshield still king?” He hopes he’s not. He hopes the bastard died of grief, or found himself beheaded on an orcish scimitar like his grandfather. But Nori is so young, so inexperienced, he doesn’t read the hate in his voice.

“Thorin? Oh, yes. He’s still young. I’m not even sure he’s a hundred.” Thorin was, if he remembered correctly a hundred and twenty years old, give or take. He still had the best years left in him.

“Has he married yet?” He must have, now. He was the last of his line, a line that stretched back to the very waking of the Seven Fathers. Briefly, he imagines a little dark-haired dwarrow in Thorin’s arms, a dearly-beloved son. He imagines killing the child, and shivers.

“I don’t think he will. He’s declared Fili his official heir so—”

Fili.

Fili.

Fili is alive?

He’s going to be sick. It’s so impossible, so beyond everything imaginable.  Nobody saw them. Nobody saw his wife and son – they were  dead , they died years ago and he’s spent his life mourning them. There has to be some sort of mistake.

“Fili?” He’s finding it hard to speak and the picture of this little thief from Ered Luin wavers and blurs. “Fili – his nephew? A little blonde dwarrow?” He can feel the tears on his face, coursing down the sharp lines that Thorin cut into him.  No.

Nori screams curses, fists flying. He must have figured out who this stranger was, sitting before him. He can’t defend himself against this youngster. By the time Nori’s pulled away and dragged off, he has a broken nose, a black eye and a cut lip. He can’t feel a thing though. His heart is pounding and he runs, runs north-west, as far and as fast as he can before he’s ever found, runs towards his son, no longer a ghost and a memory.

 

* * *

When it soured for him, when Dís turned away and became cold to his touch, he felt as though his world was ending. Perhaps Vili was right – she was trying to hurt him with her intentional distance. She wanted to manipulate him, make him suffer. Resentment sparked in his chest. She had  no right to abandon him. She was  his , completely, entirely. She was his wife and he had right and privilege over every part of her.

But when she changed suddenly in the night, called him back, that ugly little seed vanished from sight and mind. It didn’t disappear completely – he realised afterward that it had merely taken root, thin threads of white and silver snaking through his heart, but at that moment, and in the months afterwards, he didn’t feel a thing.

When she announced her pregnancy, he cried. It was about time; his fertility was finally kicking in now that he had passed sixty. He pressed his face to that soft stomach, as though he could already feel the tiny little limbs kicking out at him. The love came rushing back, an inexplicable joy and pride at what he had helped to create. Dís smiled at him, pale and tired, and he treated her with every ounce of kindness he could muster.

Vili hissed in his ear, warned him to be careful. Now she carried his child, there was a handle, a way to control him further. He had to be on his guard, had to keep an eye out for the sneaky bitch. The insults against Dís left him cold, an uncomfortable prickle down his spine.

He was always a fighter, but it seemed now to double, grow. His fists were always aching, his nose searching, sniffing, seeking out the smell of blood. He was  good at it, knocking people down. There seemed to be no shortage – his nerves were stretched to breaking point, with Dís, his father, the pressures of the court, the politics he waded about in, knee-deep. Fighting until he was bruised and black-eyed, his knuckles raw, it soothed him, it kept everything back, and he found he needed more and more of it.

“Do you love me?” He whispered the words one night in bed, stretched out, resting on one elbow. Dís was awake, restless and aching from the weight of their child. Her eyes opened at his words, and she sat up, clumsy, her stomach massive and swollen in front of her.

“Of course I do.” She touched his face and in the shadowy light he thought she was smiling. He took the hand, kissed it, believing, hoping, wishing that what she said was true.

 

* * *

Ered Luin is exactly as he remembers, watching from a distance. It’s autumn, that damp, chilly period when it’s about to turn into winter. Leaves cling desperately to the branches as they wither and die, and when the wind whips along the valley, there’s an icy chill from the mountains, a promise of snow in the weeks to come.

He takes his time. There’s no way, he knows, that he can simply walk in and take his Fili back. That bitch would still be there, of that he had no doubt. If he was alive, she would be too, and she would never, ever release her hold on their little boy. The anticipation edges towards madness, as he waits in the thick wood outside the valley. He has fantasies about killing her -- he had those before, but they feel so much more real, now that he knows she’s not dead and there’s a chance that he could really do it. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill Dís, not if he needed to. Fuck, if he’d killed her all those years ago, slit her throat and left her to bleed on the bedchamber floor, he would still be happy. He and Fili would still be home, princes together, father and son, master and tutor.

There’s still a chance. Still a slim, wild chance, to undo everything that his wife had done to him. If he brought Fili back, then his family  had to accept him again. Even if he would never sit on the throne, he could still be a father to his son, still guide and train Fili, and once Vili died, Fili could take the crown for the both of them.

He has to hold on to this now. He can’t go back to that empty period of nothingness, that soul-sucking wandering that nearly killed him. He was dead, without his little boy.

 

* * *

The baby was so impossibly small, the first time he held him in his arms. His little Fili. He sat on the bed with Dís leaning against him, sleeping. Blood was everywhere, over his trousers, her nightshirt, the sheets. She was pale under the smears of red, her closed eyes shadowed with grey. But Fili, he was perfect. He had his father’s eyes, dark, heavy blue, and a wispy fuzz of gold on his head. The midwife tried to pry them apart, saying Fili needed to be cleaned and wrapped, but he didn’t want to let go. He didn’t ever want to let go.

Fili’s eyes opened, clean and innocent. White as milk, his soul was, new and uncorrupted, a blank piece of paper. He would write Fili’s story, would build him up in his own image and make sure that nobody else, not even Dís, would pry Fili apart from him. His entire fist was wrapped around the tip of his father’s pinky, the tiny body nestled in the crook of his arm. It was such a sharp, instantaneous reaction. He completely loved this tiny little baby, and his chest burned with a fierce instinct to hold him, protect him, shield him from everybody. To make him strong, to make him a king.

“Hello,” he whispered in Khuzdul, gently rocking the infant from side to side. “Hello Fili. I’m your father. I’m going after you and protect you, for as long as I live. I will always, always be there for you, I promise. Nothing is or ever will be more important in this world than you, not to me.”


	2. Chapter 2

Finally - finally -  finally -   they enter the forest, with empty baskets strapped to their backs. He sees Dís first, for the first time since he raped her and left her bleeding on his bedroom floor. She’s thinner, he can tell even from a distance, her hair is longer, but her bird-song voice is just the same. She’s singing, and the sound makes his stomach go soft, the blood swell in his veins.

He’s still in love with her.

He keeps looking. He can see Fili -  Oh fuck it is it’s Fili, he’s still there, he’s alive  \- with his hair catching stray beams of sunlight that filter through the greying trees. He’s got the beginnings of his beard, and he’s not tall yet but he’s solid and strong-looking. His knees go weak and he clings to the bark as he stares at his son. Not a baby anymore, but still a boy, a dwarrow, with his whole life before him.

There’s a heavy voice, deep and booming. He swallows, and tries to focus. Dís is walking with someone, hand-in-hand. He thought at first it was Thorin, but they shift and he realises that it’s not her brother. It’s another dwarf, one he remembers only vaguely, towering over her with a dark mohawk and tattoos all over his hands. His heart is in his throat.

Dís stops singing. “Kili!” She calls. “Kili, come back!”

Kili?!

He can’t breathe now, mind closed to the impossible, refusing to believe it yet.

And then he sees it. A little dwarrow, tiny, can’t be older than seven or eight, running back to the other three, towards the dwarf at Dís’ side. “Carry me!” He whines, and the dwarf lifts the thing on his massive shoulders. He looks at the dwarrow and the dwarf, both dark-haired and dark-eyed, and then he looks at Dís, with her hand still woven in his.

He staggers back, cries with his hands pressed over his mouth so nothing will escape. He stares from a  distance at his wife, his son, her filthy lover and their bastard boy. A bastard boy with a Ironfist name. Why -  why would she do that to him? How could she? How  could she? She ruined him, ruined his life, and then simply took another, squeezing a bastard out and giving him the name of  his  people. Kili. It’s so close to his own former name that he thought he was going to be sick.

He’ll kill her. He’ll kill her and kill her lover, and that bastard dwarrow, and he’ll take Fili away from all of this.

 

* * *

The first time Dís hit him, it was a painful surprise. It left him breathless, the shock that her anger towards him is so strong, she rose her hand against him. He’d never hit her. He hurt her sometimes when they were in bed, being too rough as they made love, but he never struck her, not once. He hurt. That punch in his chest got right down into his heart, bruised and bleeding, and that shock snapped from anguish to anger. He had to make her hurt, twice as much, to show how much  she hurt  him. He easily overpowered her, wrestled her to the floor and hit her, again and again, until that look of stout defiance cracked and she was begging for him to stop, screaming in pain, and that blow still hurt.

When he finally crawled off her, he snatched Fili from his gilded crib and held him close, the curls just long enough now to spill through his fingers. He turned away from her, tried to block out the sound of her crying. Fili seemed to insulate him, restless and murmuring, and so he held on, burying his nose in that mop of golden hair and breathing very hard, in and out.

He saw the bruises as she dressed for bed, black and purple over her breasts and stomach. She crawled in, stiff and swollen, holding herself carefully, shrinking away from him in fear. There was a dark bruise on her cheekbone, and one eye was already going black. He collapsed on the bed and broke, holding her hand at first, because he was afraid to touch any more of her, but as the gasps of air turned into sobs and he couldn’t speak coherently anymore, he crawled into her arms like a child, like his own infant son. He gabbled that he wouldn’t touch her again, he was sorry, so very, very sorry.

But it wasn’t the last time he hit her, not even close.

 

* * *

He loses. It’s a flash of red and black in his mind, when he tries to remember it, edged with the memory of cold steel against his throat. Dís was so much stronger than he remembered her to be, and with him being as old and frail as he was now, it was easy for her to beat him.

She didn’t want him to die. She looked into his eyes and saw that he wanted it to end, and she didn’t give that to him. She wanted him to go on suffering like this, to feel the pain of loss and grief, to be alone, the way he made her feel alone, all those years in the Orocani Mountains. He lies on his back and bleeds, feels his skin swell and blacken. That’s what it became for them, in the end. Hand-to-hand combat, trying to lay blows on one another in their most vulnerable parts and making them hurt.

In the dusk, when he can finally move, he cleans himself up at the river. The water’s cool and soothing, it helps him to think. She thinks she’s won, beating him almost to death and leaving him broken. She’s won, she has their son, and she’ll raise him like a Longbeard, arrogant and heartless. She has another dwarf to love, another little boy, and what does he have? Nothing. He’s empty. The bitch.

Fili’s already been turned against him. It’s sickening to remember the way Fili writhed and screamed against him, begging to be released. He leans over the bank and retches, unable to stop shaking.

She thinks she’s left him for dead, but she hasn’t. The next morning, he stands at the edge of the valley and stares at Ered Luin, at Dís and Fili, so close and yet so far away. There’s still one last thing he can do to make the bitch hurt.

 

* * *

Dís actually said no to him when Fili was two years old. He came into their shared bedchamber expecting to see Dís readying herself for the execution that afternoon. She was still in her nightclothes, playing with Fili before the fire. He caught a snatch of sing-song, a voice he heard so rarely at this point, light with laughter and joy. As soon as he closed the door behind him and Dís looked up, the laughter died.

“Why aren’t you ready?” Fili isn’t dressed either. His curls are still unbrushed, and he’s in his nightgown, fat little wrists spilling over the white cloth. “They’re expecting us in just a few minutes.”

“We’re not going.” Dís stood up. Behind her was Thror’s marvellous axe, inlaid with jewels and gold, hanging over the fireplace. She didn’t back down as he walked towards her. “I’m not taking Fili to that place, not yet. He’s too young.”

“I’ve been going since I was a babe.” His voice is hard as iron. “So did my father, and his. We go. We  all go, always.” In the back of his mind, Vili echoed faintly. This was it, her trying to control him.

“He’s not going.” Her voice shook. “I don’t care what you did at his age. Fili’s not going to be like  you and this tribe of savage beasts. He is a son of Durin and--”

The force of the slap left Dís reeling against the mantelpiece. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe through the heavy fog over his head. He wanted to hit her again, smash her skull against the edge of the marble fireplace until there was red and grey oozing down her neck. But Fili was staring up at them both now, his big blue eyes wide with fright, whimpering. He couldn’t do it here, not with his son close enough to catch the falling blood.

But he could still talk in a low hiss, one Fili couldn’t hear. “Never , ever  disobey me again, Dís.” Her mouth was shaking. “And don’t think for a  moment that you can dictate how to raise my son. He is an Ironfist in blood and soul.” He grabbed her arm. “Your people are a gaggle of vagrants and wanderers that mean nothing to him. He will never see them.  You  will never see them, not again. The so-called line of Durin will die with your pathetic brother and the Longbeards will never sit on a throne again. Thorin is nothing. You are nothing, Dís. Nothing!” She was trying not to cry. “I made you - I took you away from that stinking pit of poverty and despair and I gave you everything you could ever want. I gave you a home, I  loved you - I still love you - I gave you a family to call your own and you  dare to claim Fili is one of theirs?” He spat on the rug and stepped away. “Get dressed.  Now. ”

 

* * *

The inn-room is simple, rustic, and far beyond anything he can afford. He wonders if his father’s representatives will offer to pay for it.

A forged letter, signed by a supposed travelling merchant. He wasn’t sure if the Ironfists would believe it, but they did. They invited him to come, but he insisted on meeting in an Easterling town some forty miles south. He knows better than to re-enter his old home without permission.

It’s Fíak. He enters alone, standing in the doorway and staring at his former prince, ragged and old and broken down. A muscle tightens in his throat and he shuts the door without a word, crossing the room and sitting down at a too-big chair before the fire. “I had a feeling it would be you.” Fíak speaks quietly. “Merchant, my arse.”

“So you see me.” He croaks. “Say it. Say my name.”

Fíak’s lip curls. “Not for a thousand pounds of gold.” He kicks at the chair facing him. “Sit down, and tell me all about what you saw while you were poking around Ered Luin.”

He’s shaking as he sits down, and has to take several deep breaths of air. “They’re alive.” He whispers. “Fili and - and Dís, they’re alive. Somehow, they made it back, I saw it.” Fíak continues to stare at him, but his face has changed. He’s tense now, shocked. “And-and she - that  cunt \- she’s had another baby.” His voice cracks. “A little boy, about seven years old, maybe more. She burned my name from her wrist and took another - that  bitch , I’ll kill her. I’ll tear out her throat-” The creaking of wood makes him stop. Fíak has already stood up, smoothing down his furs.

“I'll inform Víli. Perhaps we will see fit to negotiate-"

"Perhaps!?" He shouts. “Fili is his grandson! He is his heir, there is no perhaps! You have to take him away before that whore can do any more damage to him, before they make him one of them!"

"We don't have to do anything you say. You were the one who fucked this up." Fíak snarls at his former prince, tongue finally loose after decades of respectful, unwilling silence. "Vili told you, I told you, we all told you, over and over, what a fool you were to marry her. We all warned you not to let her get the upper hand but you were so stupidly arrogant and besotted, you thought you knew best. Do you know how much you embarrassed your father? Why do you think he left you to rot in exile, rather than defend you!" Fíak was shouting too, eyes gleaming blue fire. "You were always a selfish, spoiled little brat with a temper. Well, was it worth it? Was she worth it,  Your Highness?  " He steps away, reaching into his pocket. A small bag of gold lands on the floor between them. "Take this, and fuck off. Go to Ered Luin if you want, let Thorin finish the job. Go to the lands over the sea. Go anywhere in the world, but stay away from the Orocani Mountains. Stay away from the Ironfists. You have no business coming within a hundred miles of here."

The last Ironfist to ever lay eyes on him turns, and walks out the door.

* * *

 

Fighting became normal for the both of them. Someone always had a bruise on their face or stomach, knuckles left swollen and sore. They brawled like drunkards at a pub, pulling hair and biting, screaming at each other so loud that half the kingdom heard it.

The so-called making up was like a strip of gauze over a bleeding artery, and both of them knew it did more harm than good. It wasn’t making love anymore -- it was brutal, senseless fucking, trying to make her hurt and simply turning away afterwards, retreating to the cold side of the bed. He heard her crying and trying to hide it a lot. More often than not, his own eyes were stinging. He hated her stubbornness, her pig-headed refusal to just  listen to him. He longed to go back just a few years, when they were still happy, when she walked hand-in-hand with him, when she looked at him and smiled and he thought his heart would jump out of his chest. He hated her but he loved her too, so violently and passionately that it ached.

It was Fili that drove them apart, wedged in between them, but he didn’t feel an ounce of resentment to his son. It was Dís’ fault - she was the one that fought him every step of the way, who wanted Fili to learn about, and be more like, his mother’s people. She was the one who wanted to feed him that golden poison. He screamed it at her while they fought. It didn’t make sense to him. Durin’s Folk had torn themselves apart with their greed. They brought a dragon on their heads, and after losing that, killed themselves to snatch Moria, a glimpse at their former glory. They were slaves to their overwhelming greed, they  sold Dís, for a pittance, just to try and have two gold coins to rub together. Dís screamed back that he came from a tribe of rapists and murderers, who thought nothing of stabbing someone over a minor argument, who thought an acceptable form of entertainment was disemboweling a petty thief and leaving him to bleed before a massive crowd.

It was those differences, which they had been able to overlook when it was just the two of them, were brought to the fore with the arrival of Fili. Later, looking back, he realised he could have made some small concessions with his wife, and maybe she would have stayed. He could have let her braid Fili’s hair, could have kept him away from the ring until he was ten.

Could have, could have, could have...

He grew so angry sometimes that he couldn’t breathe. He had fits of screaming, swearing and crying, becoming so totally disconnected from reality that he lost minutes at a time, coming to with bloody knuckles. He was losing control, and it terrified him. The only person who could ever help, could understand, he drove away with his violence and insanity. All he could do was apologise after he’d hurt her, beg for forgiveness again and again, and every time her forgiveness grew harder and harder to believe.

* * *

 

The sun beats down. It’s high summer again, and he’s walking along the beach. He watches the waves break against the crumbling rocks, yellow sea-foam creep along rare snatches of tar-black sand. It’s a small fishing village down here, dark-skinned people with a strange language on the eastern coast of the world. It turns out dwarves are stout, hardy travellers when they’re forced out of their underground prisons - he’s gone off the edge of the map, into those open white spaces where people venture and never return. When he first arrived, they asked for his name. Nameless, he said, but in their tongue, it had a completely different meaning and sounded like a real name, so it stuck. 

It’s been twenty years since he saw Fíak. Sometimes, it feels as though he’s stopped feeling anything at all. Sometimes it’s all a daze, a distant dream that he only can recall in bare glimpses and snatches. He tries to pin it down, give himself a frame of reference. Fili would be older now than he was when he married Dís. He’s been apart from her now for longer than they were together.

But sometimes, he sits down, stares at his wrist, and it feels as though he’s still back home, as though it was only a few hours ago that he sat with Fili on his knee, gently rocking him from side to side and retelling an old story of his grandfather’s, only yesterday that he lay in bed with his wife, two halves of a whole, dark and fair, blue and red, nestled together like puzzle pieces. Sometimes, he can smell her, still feel the silk of their sheets against his skin, her soft hair brushing his chest.

He didn’t have another, not after her. He couldn’t even touch himself, get hard long enough to come. It's all shrivelled and dead down there, the husk of an animal that had dried in the desert sun. Sometimes he dreams, wakes up sweaty and sticky with his heart racing, but he has no other release.

What a waste of a life. He mourns for himself, for everything he’s lost. Not just  her , not just his son, but his home, his family, his friends, his money and title and power. Everything he has ever known. There’s no second life, no chance. He wanders, like many of the pilgrims he’s seen, heading to far-flung temples to pray at the bodies of people who died long ago. Only there’s no absolution for him. There’s no prayer, no purging or penance that can undo what he’s done.

* * *

 

Their vicious, violent accusations and screaming fits reached a crescendo the night before Fili turned four. The worst thing was, it started over something so stupid and insignificant, something that never should have been an issue. It was such a stark, telling reminder of how long they had been fighting, how long Dís had been standing against him. After all that time, after the decades of love, the birth of their child, the horrible fighting that came after, she was finally through with him.

They were looking at things Fili could wear the next day. He already picked out Fili’s best things, made of a soft, maroon leather and a heavy fur. But Dís showed him something else, something she’d made herself from the worn remains of her old linens. It was a little blue tunic, with the high neck and a braid of gold along the hem. He scoffed at her, said Fili wasn’t going to be seen in her old Longbeard rags. When she insisted and grew irritable, he threw it on the fire.

After the fighting, when he held a wet rag against his split lip and she painted over her black eye,  he realised he went too far this time. In a pathetic attempt to placate her, he tried to reconcile. He tried to be reasonable. He tried to explain, without raising his voice for once, that Fili was an Ironfist and it just wasn’t appropriate. He suggested getting more blue linen, paying to get it imported from the south (although he never went through the expense and trouble for  her ) and getting something made up that he could wear as underclothes, if that would make her happy. But it wasn’t good enough. She was cold as she checked on Fili. He went to bed and lay awake, stared across at the empty space and felt the sick nerves and fear swell in his stomach, creeping through his limbs and taking root in his mind. There was a painful, painful suspicion that she wasn’t coming back.

So it wasn’t a complete surprise in the morning when she asked for her own room. He still cried, still begged, clawed at her skirts, pleaded for her to reconsider. Dís just stared at him, heartless and unfeeling as he knew Longbeards to be, and asked with absolute calm to stop getting his tears all over her dress.

 

* * *

 

He comes to the temple out of desperation. He’s barely eaten in days, his clothes have worn through, and he’s lost his shoes. It’s hard out here. He’s picking up the local tongue, slowly, but there’s no dwarves out here, there hasn’t been for centuries, and he’s regarded with mistrust and fear. He has nothing to trade, no way to earn any coin. It’s after the fourth day of eating only rubbery seaweed that he knows he can’t go on. He’s come too far to die in some unknown land, completely forgotten. 

If the sisters of Qalme-Tari are shocked and disgusted by him, they don’t show it. It’s habitual, they murmur, for wanderers to call upon their doors for sustenance. As the devoted servants of the Lady of mercy and compassion, they can’t turn anyone away. After a slow rebuild, where he does little more than sleep and eat, he’s fit to earn his keep. His back strains beneath the twin labours of prayer and toil, hunched over for hours in silent contemplation and the endless recitation of hymns, and then working the land, ploughing and turning until he can no longer stand. 

Six months after he arrives, he tells the head sister about everything he had done. He talks about how he had beaten Dís, belittled her, mocked her family, kept her isolated, forced himself on her, fought with her. He tells her about his malicious wife who tried to turn his little boy against him, who swore at him and made him blind with rage, who ran away and left him alone, who cost him his name and title and everything in the Orocani Mountains he ever held dear. He tells her that he saw Dís later, with a new lover and a bastard child, and his name on her wrist has been burned away.

His voice breaks as he speaks, and he expects to be sent away for what he’s done. The old woman looks at him with her eyes and hair as dark as pitch and her sagging, lined face the colour of burned sugar, looking almost black against her pure white habit. She reaches out, holds her hands and says that their Lady forgives him. She forgives him. She tells him to let go of his grief and anger. Even after twenty years, he still grieves for everything he lost, he’s still angry, but the sisters don’t preach grief and anger in these halls. They speak of pity, mercy, endurance, and hope. Above all, they preach forgiveness, something that he had never really felt. He never forgave anybody, and nobody ever really forgave him. Even Dís, when she lay in his arms and said she had forgiven him, was just paying lip-service. It wasn’t true. This old woman, holding his hands and smiling, just might be the first person in his life who really means it. 

He throws himself in her arms and cries, until his eyes are too red and swollen to see, her shoulder is wet and his throat burns. This isn’t like his temper tantrums, his fits of madness that he used to have when he was married, when he broke the furniture and sobbed in front of Dís until she accepted his apologies. All the while, the sister holds him, murmuring that it was all right to cry, that tears were healing, were a sign of new life, just as the Lady’s tears brought forth the sun and the moon at the dawn of the world. 

 

* * *

When Dís left his bed, it was like a mortal wound had been inflicted, right on his heart. He clutched it and bled, howling like a beaten animal, leaving the chamber they once shared in torn rags and splinters. After licking his wounds, he rose in the morning with the blood drying on his fingers, intent on doing what he did best -- making her hurt in kind, mirroring the wound she had made. 

So, he took Fili away. He stood in Dís’ new bedchamber, so white and clean and unlike their blood-red silks and silver-black furs. He smiled as he said he thought Fili was old enough to start doing things on his own, without holding his mother’s hand. Things like dinners, public engagements. Things like executions. 

Fili was a good little boy, throughout all of it. He just stared out, quiet as he was told to be, biting hard on his lip. The quartering had him worried, but Fili still never said a word. He was far more well-behaved than his father, Vili muttered afterwards, ruffling Fili’s wild curls. It was good to have a stomach for this sort of thing at such a young age. 

Dís just looked at him. She shook her head, that heavy stone mask back on her face. She didn’t scream or cry at him. Not even later, when he came into her room, asking if she’d enjoyed the day. She sat on the edge of the bed, and without raising her voice, without swearing, or shaking, she told him to please leave her alone, and that she didn’t have anything else to say.

He’d lost that fight. Even though he thought he had surely beaten Dís by attacking the weakest, most vulnerable part of her, her armour was undented. He drank, felt the alcohol boil in his gut like the venom of a deadly animal, infecting his limbs, getting into his brain, too hot to think, tempered with hatred and honed with incandescent rage. He would - he  would make her scream, make cry and howl and bleed. He would make her hurt, the way he did. 

He hadn’t forced himself on her - he couldn’t bring himself to do it, even though he had wanted to, so many times. He knew that it would sever the two of them irreparably, and make the life they lived, as fractured and distant as it had become, completely impossible to live. But he was so angry that night, so lost, drunk, wounded, desperate, that he felt like he couldn’t do anything else.

It took four other men to hold her down. She scratched at them, spat in their faces. It hurt so much, for the both of them. He held Dís still, digging his nails in so she would look him in the eye and all he saw was hatred and pain. After he came, he stayed for a moment, feeling her hips against his, still now, unmoving and defeated, the swell of her breasts against his chest, the stretch around him growing loose as he softened, listening to her ragged breathing in his ear. He got up, looked down on her, and saw she was broken now, utterly, utterly broken. He thought he had delivered the final blow then, ripped out her heart and left her to bleed to death. 

Horror seized him for a moment. He felt it build, and he panicked. This wasn’t how he wanted it to be, ever. He never wanted her to hate him, he never wanted to hate her either. He’d just wanted to love her, his little songbird, the foreign dam who had lost it all. He’d just wanted her to be his wife. 

But then it died, smothered beneath that blind, unfeeling rage, a little child who had fallen into a pond, tangled themselves in the reeds, and drowned. He swallowed, smoothed the contortions in his face and stood up, pulling himself back together. Dís sobbed, gasping for air, naked and stretched out. He wanted to hit her, make her scream properly, but as he curled his hand in a first, he realised he couldn’t lay his hands on her again. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. 

“Do what you want with her.” It was like someone else had taken control of his body, and spoke for him. He closed the door and leaned against it. She screamed then, screamed for mercy, screamed in pain. Slowly, he sank to the floor and listened to her scream, felt new veins open up in his head, in his hands and feet, pumping white-hot blood that veiled his vision, made her screaming sound muffled, and very far away.

 

* * *

Dís will never forgive him for what he’s done. There are some things that are too heartless and despicable to ever forgive. What he’s suffered - the hunger, the pain, the bitter, crushing loneliness - it’s not punishment enough, not even close. There never will be enough he can do to absolve it. The damage is already done, to Dís, to Fili, to himself. 

He writes down a list of everything he’s ever done that’s wrong, to his wife, Fili, his father, his friends from back home, his people, the many folk he’d stolen from and mugged on the road. For months, he holds on to it, and every time another sin comes to him, he pulls out his stub of pencil and scrawls it down, tacking on new scraps of goatskin when he runs out of space, until the list is four feet long. Then, at the altar before the great statue in reverence to Qalme-Tari, he sets it alight.

Watching the vellum burn, blacken and shrivel in the flames is like the removal of a heavy burden. He’s not absolved of his sins and he never will be, but this feels to him like the beginning of a rebuild, after being torn down and and reduced to dust and rubble. Maybe he can live again. After living in limbo for longer than he ever lived any real sort of life, he’ s not quite sure he even knows how. He imagines a house, a bed, a little patch of land, a wife, all of his own, but it seems unreal and impossible. He doesn’t feel like he deserves it. 

Some things he can never get back. He’ll never be a prince or even a dwarf again. Some places are shut off to him, forever, but that doesn’t mean he has to remain a ghost. He didn’t want to die. That fight, that will to keep on living, it didn’t come from another angry attempt to one-up Dís, as though living would hurt and spite her. He didn’t want to see her again, ever. He didn’t want to think about her now, wrapped in white and bent in prayer and penance. He was never a spiritual dwarf - his religious feeling never extended far from the feast-days and occasional hymns to Mahal - and even now, he didn’t like to think of himself as being devoted to that carved statue that presided over the bare prayer-chamber. It’s just an ideal, a thread of hope that holds him together. 

It’s this realisation that motivates him to leave. He’s armed now, sustained. He can endure now, without breaking down, and he wants to go back to the real world.=

 

* * *

His travels take him along the Eastern coast. He’s not quite a wanderer anymore. He delivers messages, packages for people along the way, makes loose acquaintances. He’s Nameless. Slowly, he earns enough money to take him back home across the vast, endless plains toward the west. The lands of civil men are inhospitable -- he’s brown from the decades of endless sun now, the markings on his face faded and otherwordly. His money runs out, and his eastern clothes start to wear down.

Dunland takes him. It’s easy enough to find smith-work, and his natural dwarvish talents are far more honed than their most skilled artisans. He builds his own hut out of mud-brick and thatched with mountain flax alongside the dozens of others nestled in a grey little valley on the southernmost slopes of the Misty Mountains. For the first time in decades, he has friends. They’re boorish wildmen, who drink too much and are prone to fighting, but he doesn’t care. It’s like a mirror up to his old self, and he can see how horrible he used to be, sharp and clear. He drinks slowly and little. Each drink is like a stone on a little raft of sticks and leaves, the ones the children wove on the riverside. Too many and he’ll drown.

He even finds love, or lust. The youngest daughter of the chieftain Aelgar takes quite a shine to him, drawn by his stories of the east. She brings life to something he thought was dead. He doesn’t know what Wulfwin sees in him -- he’s so much older than her, so more weary. She’s wild and young, eyes as green as emeralds with brown falling in a mess down her back. Perhaps it’s the savagery in him that draws her, that open rawness. Perhaps she just wants to fuck a dwarf. She’s far from pure herself. He’s not the first, she assures him, nestled in his little mud-hut, and he won’t be the last either. Still, he knows he’s dead if they get caught, and she had a tendency to get loud if she’d been drinking.

He knows the Longbeards once lived around here, and after a while the temptation gets to him. Armed with an axe and a torch, he explores the long-abandoned caves, sifting through what was left behind. There’s not much that hasn’t rotted away or eaten through or taken by the Dunlendings.

Inside a tiny room that looks made for a bachelor, he makes his greatest discovery. Unlike the wildmen, he knows how to uncover all the dwarves’ hiding-places. He can see the little marking scratched against the cave-walls, pointing to hidden nooks and crannies and secret compartments. In this little room, he finds a ring. It’s not much, just a band of silver, but on it are runes. The exact same runes he bears on his wrist.

His hands are shaking as he realises what it is. A love-ring, a little token that somebody had carved for Dís, and once she left it was left here, or forgotten about. Dwalin. He licks his lips at the name entwined with his wife’s, without beginning or end. His name was Dwalin.

Was that the dwarf he had seen in the forest that afternoon, with the little dwarrow climbing all over him, holding hands with Dís? Had she been in love with him before her betrothal? Did she carry a flame for all these years throughout her marriage, a flame that was rekindled when she returned to her people? Or was this the name of a warrior that died in battle, one she mourned long before her marriage, someone who was only a memory to her?

He would never know. 

He leaves the ring and comes back into the daylight. On flat, wide rock he sits overlooking the valley, with the abandoned Longbeard colony behind him, overlooking the little cluster of huts and tents down in the valley. It’s a grey, steely sort of day, with the wind blowing his hair back from his face. He feels dry and empty as he sat there, casting his mind back. There wasn’t a stab of hatred or anger in his chest as her face flashed through his thoughts. There wasn’t anything, for the first time in his life. Just a quietness, a still silence in his head, calm as a wide lake without even a breeze to disturb it. 


End file.
